And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks (8 page)

“Six to four no nine.”

“Ten no nine a three.”

“Five he’s right on the come-out.”

There was no small talk whatever.

We walked on. Al said, “We might go see Mary-Ann. She’s pretty nice. Only trouble is, she’s got that godawful husband, and they never serve any liquor.”

Phillip said, “Let’s go in George’s and have a drink.”

“How about Betty-Lou?” I put in.

“All right, let’s go there.”

We walked toward Betty-Lou’s place, which is back the way we had come from, in irregular straggling groups.

On the way, Phillip jumped up and pulled a branch off a tree. Al looked at me and said, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Betty-Lou lived in a cellar apartment. She was a southern girl and a Christian Scientist who was in radio and felt strongly about the future educational mission of radio. It seems that after the war you won’t be able to keep off all the culture that will be poured onto you out of radios because they’re going to make recordings of university lectures on all subjects and play them twenty-four hours a day.

I told her it sounded awful to me, and she said I was “terribly cynical.”

When we got there Betty-Lou had a visitor. He was a little man from Brooklyn who looked like a cabdriver. He wore a double-breasted suit and a loud tie in spite of the weather and was obviously on his best behavior. He had brought a bottle of California Burgundy and some sliced cold roast beef for Betty-Lou. Phillip greeted him in an offhand way and proceeded immediately to help himself to beef and wine. Al did the same and they both ignored the man from Brooklyn.

Ryko and I sat down and lapsed into a gloomy silence. Phillip was still eating roast beef with one hand while he began pulling books out of the case and turning the pages with his greasy fingers. I pulled myself together and asked Betty-Lou a few questions about radio.

After a few minutes the man from Brooklyn got up to leave. He shook hands with Ryko and me. He glanced
uncertainly at Al and Phillip. Phillip was now shuffling through a stack of records and Al was sitting cross-legged on the floor looking up at him.

The man from Brooklyn said, “Well I gotta be getting along.”

Betty-Lou walked to the door with him and told him to come again.

Phillip and Al were fooling with the phonograph and got it working, so they put on a record from
Swan Lake
.

Suddenly a large brown rat ran out of the kitchen and into the middle of the room. He stood there indecisively for a moment, then gave a squeak and ran into the bathroom.

Betty-Lou said, “Landsakes! There’s that old rat again.”

She went into the kitchen and buttered a graham cracker with phosphorus paste. She broke the cracker up and scattered pieces of it around the kitchen and in the bathroom. I knew this wouldn’t do any good because rats get wise to phosphorus paste. And besides, there were so many holes in her apartment that all the rats in New York could come in.

Presently two men and a girl arrived, and I started a dull conversation with one of the men. We were talking about the bad quality of Cuban gin, and high prices of liquor generally. He said his favorite drink was scotch
and I said mine was cognac, but you couldn’t get it anymore. He said, “Yes, you can still get it.”

I said, “Yes, at a dollar a shot.” I took a deep breath and went on to say that cognac apparently couldn’t be produced anywhere except in Cognac, France. “No brandy anywhere else tastes anything like it.”

He considered this awhile and said, “California brandy is terrible.”

I said, “I don’t like Spanish brandy.”

“Well,” he said, “I don’t care much for brandy.”

There was a long silence. I excused myself and went to the toilet and leaned against the wall, keeping a sharp eye out for the rats.

When I returned, Al and Phillip were preparing to go out and buy a bottle of rum with money subscribed by the two men. I went over and began playing records to avoid conversation. Ryko was talking to Betty-Lou, and I could overhear that it was about Phillip. Ryko seemed to be making headway with her.

Al and Phillip finally came back with two French sailors they had picked up in George’s. Everyone began to talk bad French, except the sailors who were talking bad English. They were trying to get across that they were respectable characters who were not used to taking up with strangers and everyone kept telling them that it was all right.

Finally, the party disbanded and we walked out onto the street. Phillip wanted something to eat, so we started up Seventh Avenue toward Riker’s.

Phillip hit a bus stop sign, which waved back and forth, so Al jumped up on a wooden shelf for newspapers that was in front of a candy store and knocked it down. The Greek rushed out of the store and grabbed Al, and Al had to give him a dollar.

Later, when we were sitting in Riker’s at the counter eating eggs, Ryko told me that Betty-Lou had taken a great dislike to Phillip.

“There’s something rotten about him,” she had said. “He has the smell of death about him.”

“That’s one for the book all right,” I said.

Later, as we were leaving Riker’s, Phillip showed me a dollar and said he’d stolen it out of Betty-Lou’s purse.

W
EDNESDAY TURNED OUT TO BE A BEAUTIFUL DAY
. It was one of those clear and cool June days when everything is blue and rose and turret-brown. I stuck my head out Janie’s bedroom window and looked around. It was eleven o’clock yet everything looked fresh and keen like early morning.

Janie was sore at Phillip and me for coming home late, so she didn’t get up to make us breakfast, and Barbara was home in Manhasset.

We started off for the Union Hall and just as we turned down 17th Street there was Ramsay Allen, waiting for us on the steps of the hall with a big smile on his face.

We went in the hall and there was a whole flock of new jobs on the board. The first thing I did was go back in one of the offices and start beefing about my card.

“I can’t get a ship with this member-in-arrears card,” I told the official, “and I’ve got to go right away because I’m broke.”

“Can’t do anything for you,” he said flatly.

I went back to Phillip and Al. They were sitting in a row of chairs and Phillip was reading Briffault’s
Europa
while Al watched him. I told them what the official had said.

Al said he knew a girl from the Village who worked in one of the offices upstairs. “I’ll try to cook something up,” he said, and went upstairs to see her.

He got back fifteen minutes later and told us he had made an appointment with her for lunch.

Phillip said, “What are you going to pay her lunch with?”

Al said he’d be back in a half hour with some money, and he left.

“Well,” I said to Phillip, “I wonder why he’s helping us?”

“He probably thinks I’ll let him ship out with me,” said Phil.

It was about a quarter to one when Al got back with five bucks he had borrowed from some friends in the Village. He went upstairs and came down again with the union girl. It was plain to see that this girl was stuck on Al, and maybe she would do anything for him.

We started off for lunch and went into a Spanish restaurant on Eighth Avenue. The girl said she ate here every day and that it was a real “mañana” place. Then she asked me what my problem was and I told her.

“You see,” I concluded, “the reason why I’m behind in dues and overstayed my leave is because I was down with the flu for two weeks and it sort of knocked me off my stride.”

“Didn’t you tell them that?”

“Well,” I said, “I didn’t think it would make any difference.”

“Oh yes,” she said, “even if it was only for two weeks.”

Then I started ingratiating myself with her by asking if she knew such-and-such in the Village, or had she met such-and-such, giving her a list of my old-time left-wing friends. She knew some of them. Then I began to overdo it, telling her about my communist activities in Pennsylvania and how once I’d been arrested on the Boston Common as an agitator. She was impressed by all this. She figured me as one of the boys.

Then Al started telling funny stories, and the luncheon developed into a miniature party, only Phillip almost botched the whole works by laughing when she mentioned “the common man.”

Finally Al made a date with her for next week, and that sort of clinched the whole deal. When we were finished she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and said, “Well I think I can do something about that card of yours, Mike.”

So we all went back to 17th Street and she told us to wait while she made a few interoffice calls. “I’ll have definite news for you by three o’clock,” she said, and we saw her to the Union Hall door.

In the Anchor Bar, we ordered a round of beers, and when Phillip went into the men’s room Al said to me, “Well, Mike, so you’re headed for France. I sure wish I could come along.”

“Why don’t you?” I said.

“Phillip wouldn’t have it, I don’t think. What do you think?”

“We haven’t talked about it. As far as I’m concerned I’d like to have you along. The more the merrier, and with you around we’d make a better go of it on the tramp, I imagine.”

“Yes,” said Al nodding his head, “I think the three of us would make a better go of it. Both of you are young and impractical, you wouldn’t know how to get food or money.”

“That’s logical,” I said. “Alone I imagine we’d starve.”

“I believe you’re right,” Al said. Then he went on: “Mike, why don’t you persuade Phillip to let me come along?”

“Well,” I said, “it’s okay with me, as I told you. And I guess there’s nothing to lose trying to persuade Phillip, he may relent. Sure, I’ll ask him.”

“Give him all the arguments about food and money.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do that, Mike.”

“I will.”

Al patted me on the shoulder and ordered me another beer.

Phillip got back, and he and Al began talking about the New Vision again. Phil was wondering maybe it was impossible to achieve since we were all equipped with a limited number of senses.

Al nodded his head and said, “That’s interesting. But you might find a great deal of interesting occultist material in Yeats and also in cabalistic doctrine.”

“Rimbaud thought he was God,” Phillip said. “Maybe that’s the primary requisite. In cabala man stands on the threshold of vegetable life, and between him and God remains only a misty shroud. But suppose you actually projected yourself as God, as the sun, then what would you see and know?”

“Yes,” said Al. “You might have something there.
But of course Rimbaud eventually failed after a projection of that sort.”

Phillip knotted his fist. “Of course he did, and I think I understand why, though I’m not certain I could explain it coherently.”

“Well try anyway,” Al persuaded gently and knitted his brow.

Here Phillip waved the matter away and asked for more beer.

Finally it was three o’clock, and we went back across the street into the hall. I called up the girl from the foyer and she told me who to see. I thanked her for her trouble and then Al took the phone and started chatting with her.

The union official said she had heard of my special case from a sister, and due to the circumstances she was willing to issue me a new card. While it was being made out, I slipped a couple of blank cards in my pocket in case of any future emergency.

I went back to Phillip and Al with the good news. We stood in front of the board with the other seamen and looked over the shipping.

“Now we’ll get a ship for sure,” Phillip said.

“If not today, tomorrow,” I said. Then I showed Al the blank cards I had lifted from the office. He immediately took them out of my hand and stuffed them into
his coat pocket. It was done so quickly that Phillip hadn’t even noticed. I looked at Al and he looked at me gravely.

A minute later Al said he had to leave to go do a painting job on 52nd Street, and he left. Phillip and I sat down on a bench to wait for the three-thirty job call.

At three-thirty there was a call for deckhands. I threw in my new card with four other ABs and almost flopped when one of the jobs was sold to me. Phillip and I beamed with satisfaction, and he lit my cigarette with trembling hands.

Then the call for ordinary seamen came, and Phillip threw in his card with about ten other ordinaries. The dispatcher was shuffling the cards around, checking on seniority dates.

There was one of these ordinaries who had been hanging around the job window all day, a thin, pimply kid of about seventeen who looked like some sort of moron. His card was thrown back in his face, as had been the case all day long. I looked at his card and saw ‘member in arrears’ stamped on it. He didn’t have enough sense to go to the open job window, so he just hung around this window all day long, throwing in his worthless card and getting it thrown back in his grimly smiling face. I told him what to do, since no one else seemed to bother about it, not even the dispatcher.

Phillip’s card was thrown back, but he was beaten only by a matter of hours in seniority. We went back to our seats and I said, “It’ll come.”

The dispatcher was saying over the mike, “One of those AB jobs returned. One AB job open.” That was mine.

“Tomorrow’s our day,” I said. “We’ll get up real early.” I started to think about Al’s success with the union girl, and looked at Phillip, who had reopened his book.

“Al’s an amazing guy,” I said. “With him you never have to worry about anything.”

Phillip looked up from his book.

I decided to get it over with so I said, “Why don’t you let Al ship out with us? He wants to come bad.”

Phillip made a tortured face. “Eee,” he said, “no. The whole purpose of shipping out is to get away from him. I told you that.”

I shrugged and said, “I don’t get it.”

“Since you’re not very well acquainted with the facts I don’t expect you to get it.”

“Okay,” I said coldly.

It got to be five o’clock again, and Phillip suggested we go to Al’s and have dinner with him. He thought that Al would have some money from painting, but I knew damned well Al was running all over town looking for
a time-clock puncher with which to stamp his blank cards so he could ship out with us.